It was 2006, not long since Vladimir Putin had passed a new law allowing the KGB to kill traitors outside Russia, and soon after Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned after visiting a London sushi bar. Mikheil Saakashvili, the then president of Georgia, remembers being at a banquet with Putin and Aleksandr Lukashenko, the always president of Belarus. Saakashvili was on his way to London and Lukashenko was making jokes about it. Eat well here, he advised Saakashvili, and don’t eat anything in London, especially not sushi.

Lukashenko didn’t leave it at that. He said the safest food was Putin’s and passed Putin’s plate to Saakashvili. At which point Putin got cross, dropped his fork and said he had nothing to do with Litvinenko’s murder.

If Saakashvili was travelling to Britain today, Lukashenko might advise him not to visit any Italian restaurants in the Salisbury area. And this film, timed to coincide with the run-up to the forthcoming Russian elections, suddenly takes on even more poignancy. It’s an excellent portrait of the man who is certainly going to win at the ballot box, from a boy growing up poor in a St Petersburg flat, to a low-ranking KGB officer with no political ambitions, to accidental power and wealth that he then got a taste for. He accumulated power and wealth at an exponential rate, as well as the ego and narcissism that go with them. The film takes us through his battles with oligarchs and the military campaigns in Ukraine and Crimea, right up to Syria and the interference in foreign elections and referendums. It’s stuffed full of insight and anecdotes from a stellar cast of top-level pundits: foes, politicians, former ambassadors and allies.

Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is amusing on trying to stand against Putin and having, not just doors slammed in his face but whole airports shut down, as he tried to put together a nationwide campaign. As amusing as the erosion of democracy and civil liberties can be, anyway. Putin’s dacha neighbour and former confidante Sergei Pugachev’s assessment of his erstwhile buddy is good value, too. “First of all he’s a weak man,” he begins. “Secondly, he’s an envious and greedy man, And thirdly he’s a man who always lies.”

But the best lines are Putin’s own. Such as: “Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove you are right.” And: “I am the wealthiest man, not just in Europe but in the whole world. I collect emotions.” That would be funny, if it weren’t so damn scary.